In their recent "Marvel Studios Celebrates the Movies" video, Marvel revealed a line-up of films that will take them through May of 2023 – Black Widow, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Eternals, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor: Love and Thunder, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Marvels, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – and ended with the promise that a new Fantastic Four movie will be following soon after. Which left many fans wondering, where was Blade?
Marvel announced that they were working on a Blade movie that would star Mahershala Ali at the 2019 Comic-Con, but in the two years since that announcement all we've heard is that Stacy Osei-Kuffour is wring the script. Thankfully, The Hollywood Reporter has been able to dig up some information.
In an article about the "Black Superman" project that Warner Bros. is developing, THR confirmed that Warners and DC are "committed to hiring a Black director" for that project, just like Marvel is expected to hire a Black director for Blade. So the two companies are looking over the same list of potential directors. Directors have met with both companies, but no decisions have been made yet – and the trade went on to reveal that Marvel has some time to find a director for Blade because the project, which was scheduled to start filming this September at one point, won't go into production until July of 2022.
Here's how THR put it:
Ta-Nehisi Coates isn’t expected to deliver his Superman script until mid-December. Likewise, Marvel isn’t rushing with Blade, whose start date was pushed from this September to July 2022, so that the studio can spend time working on the Stacy Osei-Kuffour-penned script.
So now we finally have some idea what's going on with Blade. We still have fourteen months before the movie even starts filming, then it will probably be released in either late 2023 or sometime in 2024.
The Blade character was, of course, previously played by Wesley Snipes in a trilogy of films from New Line Cinema. Kirk "Sticky Fingaz" Jones also played the character in a short-lived television series.
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